LeapFrog/YMMV
< LeapFrog
- Ear Worm: Some of the music played by the toys are very catchy. As are the music in the DVD series. It got so awesome that there were two soundtrack music CD releases.
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We love the sounds that letters make / we make them every day... |
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- Tear Jerker: In A Tad OF Christmas Cheer, when Tad does a duet with Mrs. Frog that something is missing. Made especially cruel since Tad is singing it out in the cold, while it's snowing.
- They Changed It, Now It Sucks:
- The second-edition LeapPad Academy, quietly released as a hardware revision of the Epic line in 2021, became this. While the move to Android 10 is long overdue considering how they stuck with Android 4.4 "KitKat" since the Epic was first released, (and well into the 2020s, just as when people have long since moved on to newer Android versions) VTech (who now owns the company and is also now apparently involved in development) locked down the new-revision LeapPad Academy even further, disabling if not fully removing development options which is present on almost all Android devices from the past decade and thus the ability to enable Android Debug Bridge is no longer accessible. The setting to enable it appears to be lying dormant in the database used to store system settings, but changing it involves enabling a setting through ADB, ironically enough. And forget about dumping the firmware either as the bootloader has a booby trap corrupting dumps past a certain point; to be fair this is hardly unique to LeapFrog as the code to deter firmware data-mining has been on Rockchip's source repository all along though this was removed in a later commit. And if that wasn't enough, Bluetooth support was removed in the second edition as well, making it nigh impossible to connect wireless accessories such as external speakers and headphones to the tablet. While this may not matter to a casual audience, some parents whose kids might be using Bluetooth headsets or speakers to listen to educational content might end up getting frustrated over the lack of functionality.
- This became less of an issue when the firmware was successfully dumped in 2024 by an xda-developers user, allowing modifications to the system as well as the installation of custom ROMs.
- Not helping matters was VTech's now-tainted reputation following a widely-publicised data breach which exposed information from millions of parents and their children no thanks to the company's poor security practices, thus making some people understandably leery about VTech's acquisition of LeapFrog and the changes they might have brought to the toy line, if the comments on Linus Tech Tips's video on kids' electronic toys are any indication.
- The second-edition LeapPad Academy, quietly released as a hardware revision of the Epic line in 2021, became this. While the move to Android 10 is long overdue considering how they stuck with Android 4.4 "KitKat" since the Epic was first released, (and well into the 2020s, just as when people have long since moved on to newer Android versions) VTech (who now owns the company and is also now apparently involved in development) locked down the new-revision LeapPad Academy even further, disabling if not fully removing development options which is present on almost all Android devices from the past decade and thus the ability to enable Android Debug Bridge is no longer accessible. The setting to enable it appears to be lying dormant in the database used to store system settings, but changing it involves enabling a setting through ADB, ironically enough. And forget about dumping the firmware either as the bootloader has a booby trap corrupting dumps past a certain point; to be fair this is hardly unique to LeapFrog as the code to deter firmware data-mining has been on Rockchip's source repository all along though this was removed in a later commit. And if that wasn't enough, Bluetooth support was removed in the second edition as well, making it nigh impossible to connect wireless accessories such as external speakers and headphones to the tablet. While this may not matter to a casual audience, some parents whose kids might be using Bluetooth headsets or speakers to listen to educational content might end up getting frustrated over the lack of functionality.
- Periphery Demographic:
- Perhaps infamously, the Fly Fusion Pentop Computer. Businessmen and geeks alike love them so much that it spun off a professional pentop computer product for the adult market segment.
- Many of the plush toys manufactured by the company also attracted college students due to their cuteness factor, this was Lampshaded in a Leapfrog commercial in the late 90s/early 2000s. Even today, the Scout and Violet toys don't just attract kids.
- The Leapster, LeapPad and Epic lines gained some notoriety in hacking circles due to them running embedded Linux (and in the case of the Epic, a heavily skinned Android distribution). The RetroLeap firmware by mac2612 allows people to repurpose their kids' now-outgrown LeapPads to a rather capable retro handheld, and a group of hackers also managed to port LineageOS to the Epic.
- The Woobie: Tad, especially in A Tad Of Christmas Cheer